PORTLAND, Ore. — At least four commercial pilots encountered mysterious lights zipping through the skies above Oregon this past weekend.
One pilot flying an air ambulance reported a bright light streaking toward his Life Flight plane, with it suddenly reversing back toward the Pacific Ocean.
“Red in color — moving at extreme speeds. I don’t even know how to describe how fast it was moving,” the pilot told air traffic control.
On Sunday night, Dec. 8, the pilot of a United Airlines flight described unexpected lights in the sky above the Eugene area.
“We’re seeing three or four targets. They’re all altitudes. Up and down. It’s pretty crazy,” the pilot told air traffic controllers, who confirmed there was no military activity in the area.
The Life Flight pilot reported one of the lights was going in circles in a “corkscrew pattern” and showed up on his aircraft’s collision avoidance system.
“You are cleared to maneuver as necessary — a left or right to avoid the UFO out there,” an air traffic controller responded in the audio clip posted online.
Several brief video clips taken by pilots and their crew showed lights in the night sky, although objects are difficult to see because of the dark conditions.
“It’s weird. It’s red, circular shape, and it keeps zipping out towards the ocean and then coming back about 20 miles or closer to us — then it zips back to the ocean,” the Life Flight pilot told air traffic controllers on Sunday night.
Two Horizon Airlines pilots also reported seeing mysterious lights, according to an air traffic controller.
The flights each continued without further incident. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) acknowledged that a pilot saw unidentified lights but did not provide further comment.
So, what could it be?
“That appears to be Starlink satellites, most likely,” explained scientist and researcher Douglas Buettner, who led a study examining a case of five pilots who saw several bright moving objects over the Pacific Ocean in 2022.
The pilots, flying in two commercial aircraft, took photos and video of unrecognizable objects reported as unidentified aerial phenomena. Buettner and his colleagues determined the bright lights were flare from numerous Starlink satellites, launched by SpaceX to provide broadband internet.
“Literally all it is — it’s the sun hits the satellite just right, and it is being reflected back into your eye,” explained Buettner, deputy chief scientist of the Acquisition Innovation Research Center, led by the Stevens Institute of Technology.
He believes the eye-catching lights spotted by pilots over Oregon were most likely satellite flares — although without better data and clear video, he hasn’t ruled out other possibilities.
“I’ve had two other people look at it, and they say it is consistent with Starlink,” Buettner explained.
In August 2022, people in Oregon witnessed a string of Starlink satellites moving dramatically across the night sky.
Last month, the Pentagon director overseeing unidentified anomalous phenomena told lawmakers the Defense Department has seen an increase in reported UAP sightings, especially since satellite constellations such as Starlink were launched.
“We do have one example that I’m aware of where we were able to correlate a number of observations of interesting lights in the sky, and eventually, we concluded that it was multiple people observing Starlink flares,” Jon Kosloski testified at a Senate hearing.